Comments on: number one, huh?

By: The OPLIN 4cast » Blog Archive » OPLIN 4cast #71

The OPLIN 4cast » Blog Archive » OPLIN 4cast #71 — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 16:11:01 +0000

[...] number one, huh? (librarian.net) [...]

By: jennimi

jennimi — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 21:28:10 +0000

hey it’s me, Belated Bouncing Back and Catching up on RSS jennimi. happy happy happy, consummate Virgo.

i think my blog is #1 in “jennimi,” which rather meets its mission. it may also be the #1 liblog in “still trying to figure out and balance upon the fine line between professional and personal and finally just saying the heck with it i am who i am which is librarian and a whole mess of other stuff” – but it’s kinda hard to test that scientifically.

incidentally, i have posted before and probably will again that while i respect Technorati immensely for what they do, i still don’t agree that the amount of incoming links should necessarily have the weight it does in assigning weight.

it’s collection development 101 really: circ stats (hits) and incoming links (recommendations) are but part of the story…. the bots and algorithms still don’t have a way of measuring worth or contribution of content, and that isn’t necessarily completely described by the above either.

no two ways about it though, congrats to librarian.net for numero uno. :)

By: Phil Bradley

Phil Bradley — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 15:18:12 +0000

Actually, I don’t think it’s got quite as much to do with longevity per se as it has with the way in which a weblog is used and promoted in part by the owner. Also, how long it’s been in the same place. For example, I’ve had a weblog since February 2003, firstly with Blogger hosted on my site and more recently with TypePad. Same blog, same readership, same type of content – just in a different place. Does that make it a ‘different’ blog? Apparently it does. That’s pretty much like saying that the same edition of a book is different because one has the cover still on and the other has it off.

Secondly, as has been pointed out all over the place, the methodology is very poor, and demands that the author should have taken some steps to optimize the blog – my ‘old’ one is in DMOZ, the ‘new’ one isn’t – because I really wasn’t that bothered to put it there. It’s also not badged as library or blog either – that’s what it’s about, but that’s not what I chose to call it.

I think there’s also an issue of geography here as well. Much of what I write is appropriate to an audience of British, rather than American librarians. As such it’s understandable that not so many American librarians read it. Which means that it’s not as popular. However, that depends entirely on how you define popular, and doing it by the numbers is only one way, leading to an inevitable bias in favour of the biggest reading bloc as it were.

So, while longevity does play a part – of course it does – it’s only one of a great many aspects.

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 04:07:09 +0000

oh thanks for that jenny. I went to jennyscybrary.com but didn’t see it. Ah memories!

By: Jenny Levine

Jenny Levine — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 03:41:41 +0000

It is all very strange, isn't it? Just for the record, The Librarians' Site du Jour does still live on (albeit frozen in time) at http://jennyscybrary.lishost.org/sitejour.html, 1995-1999, hand-coded and then done in FrontPage, all manually archived. Ah, the good old days....

By: Reading is Good | Library Stuff

Reading is Good | Library Stuff — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 13:58:03 +0000

[...] Jessamyn West – “We could all use more to read” Posted in Jessamyn, READ | Trackback | del.icio.us | Top Of Page [...]

By: Chris Turner

Chris Turner — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 03:33:06 +0000

Happy Birthday J, I’m an irregular reader and a regular fan. I’ve got 4 kids, so I not only don’t have much spare time to post to my own blog, but have yet to analyze how best to increase my page ranks. I did google ’school librarian blog’ and turned up on the 7th page of results. Hooray for me, what do I win for being 70th out of 1,910,000 pages?

Chris

By: Third Place, Again

Third Place, Again — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 19:28:05 +0000

[...] not being coy; as Jessamyn makes clear, the issue is blog longevity. Among popular blogs, the blogs that have been popular the longest [...]

By: Laura

Laura — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 20:54:16 +0000

Happy birthday one day late!

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 16:28:24 +0000

I used to be pretty high up in the search results for the list of words expurgated between the 2nd and 3rd editions of the Official Scrabble Player’s Dictionary. Yeah, that’s pretty much all I’ve got.

By: DerikB

DerikB — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 15:18:41 +0000

My blog is #? in being a blog by a librarian that is not about libraries (it’s about comics and not about comics in libraries)… at least I think, who knows, but I’ll pretend. I often wonder how many librarians there are out there that are blogging about non-library subjects.

By: Karin Dalziel

Karin Dalziel — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 15:00:39 +0000

My blog’s mood depends on whether I’m in school or not- when I’m taking classes, you’ll find a lot of posts about my classes. (go figure)

I’m still finding my voice in my blog (and the library world in general). So far it has been the best at putting me in contact with long lost friends, relatives, and teachers.

By: rteeter

rteeter — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 03:40:06 +0000

It's not a blog, but I have the best Web site for water librarians.

By: K.G. Schneider

K.G. Schneider — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 01:44:31 +0000

Good points, Jessamyn! I was mostly struck that most of the top bloggers know one another, and not because we get together at the Famous Bibliobloggers’ Convention, either. (I’m going to look up “Tales from a Liberry.”)

Happy birthday, from one Virgo to another!

By: Steve Matthews

Steve Matthews — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 23:44:37 +0000

I liked your point about link baiting, and how we’d be a little clueless if we didn’t know how these things worked. Also liked that you pointed out that G. Librarian Central is a bit out of place. Not really a librarian blog now is it? :)

Great thoughts Jessamyn, and Happy Birthday!